Mobile Breakfast Series is
a quarterly event that brings together thought leaders and
visionaries from the global mobile industry to interact and share
ideas, insights, and best practices with the entrepreneurs,
enthusiasts, and others who are passionate about mobile. The next
event is on March 10th, 2010 with keynotes from
Rob Glaser,
Chairman, Real Networks and
Kevin Martin,
former FCC Chairman.
Registration.
Sponsors: Motricity,
Openwave,
WDSGlobal, and
Clearwire
http://www.chetansharma.com/opticalwirelessbroadband.htm
Role of Optical
Wireless Broadband in the Evolving Mobile Ecosystem
Sponsored by
Skyfiber
These
are exciting times in the wireless industry. The innovation in
technology, services, and business models is driving the global
industry to new heights. While the global markets were feeling the
pain of a brutal recession, the wireless industry for the most part
sidestepped the crisis, especially the US and Asian markets. In the
US, 2009 was a banner year for the mobile data services and
applications. Each of the four quarters exceeded $10 billion in
mobile data services revenue and the subscription penetration was
approximately 93% by the end of the year.
The
mobile industry is going through significant transition from being
voice-centric to data-centric, from consumers spending 90% of their
time talking to 80% of the time spending on mobile data and games.
The main drivers of such an evolution are: better devices like the
iPhone, Droid, Pre, Bold, etc., higher capacity networks such as
WCDMA, HSPA+, and EV-DO Rev A, flat rate data pricing, and a
heightened consumer awareness of mobile applications and services.
This has boosted both the consumer engagement and the revenues from
data services.
However,
this increased usage comes at a cost. As users are becoming
accustomed to an always-on, always-connected world of mobile, they
are consuming tremendous amount of data that is putting significant
burden on the networks especially the backhaul. Further, as the need
for the bandwidth rises exponentially, we are approaching what FCC’s
Chairman Genachowski termed as “a looming spectrum crisis.”
In light of such infrastructure challenges, the industry needs to
think outside-the-spectrum-box and think long-term else we will be
in a perpetual cycle of crises. Traditional transmission
technologies like
Fiber
and Microwave will benefit from complimentary technologies such as
Optical Wireless Broadband (OWB), which enhances the operator’s
toolbox to build out efficient broadband connectivity.
This
paper discusses the mobile data growth, the backhaul demands, and
the looming spectrum crisis in more detail. Further, the paper
discusses the requirements for backhaul to support next generation
traffic and the role of new technologies such as Optical Wireless
Broadband to provide backhaul capacity solutions that are both
economical as well as future-proof.
